


Vertigo

by flyingisland



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Glove Kink, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Pining Keith (Voltron), Scent Kink, pining shiro, post episode nine, pre-season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 10:54:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9816737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingisland/pseuds/flyingisland
Summary: Mixed up laundry and unspoken feelings put Shiro in a precarious situation.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sochan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sochan/gifts).



The castle isn’t acting the way that it should.

Shiro presses his fingers hard against his temples, letting out a long sigh as he can feel the pulsing of pressure beneath his human hand. A headache charges through the inside of his skull, pounding behind his tired eyes.

He’s been working with Pidge and Allura for nearly an entire day now, trying to repair the issues to no avail. He’s watched so much text whirring past on holographic computer screens that he can still feel the burn of it behind his eyelids.

Pidge stands from her seat beside him, cracking her back noisily. The lights overhead jitter, and it sounds for a moment as though the entire ship might lose power.

“I’m taking a break,” she says dully, tugging her glasses down the bridge of her nose and rubbing her eyes, “You should too, Shiro. You’re… kind of starting to smell…”

He laughs bashfully at her bluntness, taking a moment to lift his arms and inspect the dark stains of sweat against his shirt. He has a feeling that they’re all a little gross by now, having only gotten up occasionally to go to the bathroom, relying on Coran to bring them food and collect their plates after they’re shoved them off to the side. It reminds him of cramming for finals back at the Garrison. It makes his skin crawl with the sort of familiarity that he isn’t sure if he should be nostalgic for or not.

In the end, he shrugs with a smile, telling Pidge that he’s going to take a shower if she promises to take a nap. Her responding salute is sarcastic at best, but he has faith in her nonetheless. She's wobbling so dangerously on her feet that he isn't even sure if she'll make it back to her room before she passes out. He resists the urge to walk her there, telling himself that this would only offend her.

Sometimes, he reasons, he just needs to let his fellow pilots make their own mistakes. Sometimes he has to remember to allow them to walk on their own two feet, even if they might stumble.

Pidge disappears behind the automatic door. Allura places her face in her hands.

"I'm just... going to stay here," She says slowly, breaking off into a long yawn, "I'm just... going to rest my eyes for a tick..."

She's snoring softly as he leaves.

He makes a quick stop into his bedroom for a pair of pajamas to wear while he washes his clothes. With the way that the castle is acting, he thinks that he might be lucky to get them back in one piece. He can hear Lance and Hunk laughing in the common room as he passes. The door to the training deck is locked—the twinkling red lights on the wall panel beside it signifying that it’s currently in use. After everything, he can’t believe that Keith still trusts it. Or maybe he’s just out for revenge, Shiro isn’t sure.

He tries not to think too hard about the way that Keith’s muscles might move beneath his shirt as he fights. He tries not to concentrate on the stretch of smooth skin, the tightness of calloused hands around the handle of his bayard.

He tries not to think about those little grunts and whines that he makes—the ones that Lance quietly calls “porno noises”, when he knows that Keith isn’t close enough to hear him.

Shaking his head, he chalks all of this up to a lack of sleep as he carries his clothes to the showers. He tries not to let the guilt crawl into his thoughts—tries to tell himself that only thinking about his feelings and not acting on them can’t taint his relationship with Keith too much.

It’s not like Keith pays attention enough to notice the way that he sometimes stares for a little too long. It’s not like Keith has to know that none of the scenarios playing in his head are friendship-appropriate.

If he can continue keeping these images to himself, it doesn’t hurt anyone, does it? If he can be the leader that Voltron deserves, no one needs to know about the filthy thoughts that keep him up late at night.

Somehow, that doesn’t make him feel like any less of a pervert.

With a sigh, he stops in front of the bathroom, combing a hand through his hair as the door glitches out in front of him. It slides midway open, shuddering for a moment before slamming shut. This process repeats three or four times, until he gets so sick of waiting that he jams his Galra hand into the sliver of space between the wall, pushing it back with so little strength that it startles even himself, and prying it open before stepping through.

A few sparks skitter out from the hinges, and it only continues to malfunction as he slips past. He tips his head back, counting to ten in his thoughts, telling himself that it’s not worth getting worked up over something as silly as a bathroom door before turning his back on it and erasing it from his thoughts.

One of the stalls at the end of the line is already spitting out water. He pinches the bridge of his nose.

For the time that they keep while floating through the depths of space, confined to no timetable that depends on the light of the sun or the ever-changing cycle of a single moon, it should be about mid-morning, even early afternoon.

But still, despite how early he imagines that it is, it’s already been a long day.

The laundry chute is chirping and clipping when he ventures close enough to drop off his clothes. His determination to pretend that everything is fine falters right before he begins to undress.

Would it be improper to return to the Princess and Pidge in his pajamas? Would they think that he was absolutely moronic if he told them that the ship ate his clothes?

Maybe he should have brought his Paladin armor with him as a backup outfit instead. It would have been uncomfortable, but at least he could have saved face.

He goes through his options in his head. If all else fails, the walk of shame back to his bedroom to change into his suit won’t be nearly as bad as putting on sweaty clothes after he’s clean.

He places his pajamas on the lip of the sink, peeling off his outfit and saying a silent prayer as he pushes it down the chute. He sets his shoes on the counter, already a little worried about the amount of water on the floor. Traipsing around the castle barefoot is where he draws the line, but he isn't too enthusiastic about the concept of wearing wet boots either. The gurgling and jamming noises that echo through the room are not promising, but like many things today, he decides to ignore them and hope for the best.

Until they finally fix the castle, this is all that he can do.

He makes use of the sputtering shower, stepping through the puddles and gritting his teeth under the icy spray. He isn’t sure if there will be warm water left in the castle for weeks after this. He doesn’t even know where the water comes from in the first place—where the heater is, or where it drains all of their filth.

He’s never taken the time to consider the mysteries surrounding this place. When he really takes a moment to contemplate it, _“supernatural, semi-haunted alien technology”_ doesn’t even begin to cover half of the questions that he has.

Showering doesn’t take very long—be it because of his military training to get everything done as quickly as possible, or the fact that every inch of his skin is screaming because of the cold. He bites out a breath of relief when he finally steps away from the water, feeling far too freezing to really appreciate finally being clean.

If anything, it’s cured his headache, and he doesn’t feel like he needs to take a nap anymore. He’s wide awake now, and maybe even a little hungry. He feels as though he might finally be able to sit down and truly tackle the problems among the ship.

The floor is damp all the way to the sinks now. He wonders if he should tell Allura that they’re in danger of a flood. There are drains scattered all over the bathroom floor, and he hopes that they might take care of it, lest all of them be forced to go without a bath until they can actually figure this out.

He dresses quickly, ignoring the way that the hem of his pant legs dampen in the puddles on the floor. There are more important things to be worrying about right now—like the fact that the shower head seems to be spilling out more icy-cold water by the minute, or the strange jamming sounds that are coming from the laundry chute as he approaches it.

He can feel his heart climbing up into his throat as he pushes the “return” button. He feels on edge, like the unknowing protagonist in a horror movie—like the victim of a crime just moments before the aggressor decides to strike.

And maybe the way that the laundry chute spits back up a pile of sweaty, obviously unwashed clothes really could be considered assault—in some sort of inane space logic on a laundry-based planet somewhere within the universe. He feels victimized, as he takes in the pile slowly soaking in the water on the floor, shooting so quickly past his open palms that he’d had no chance of catching it.

It takes him a moment, after picking up the damp shirt and the grubby pants and inspecting them, to realize that they aren’t even his own. The underwear tucked within the pants definitely aren’t a pair that he recognizes, and the fingerless gloves that tumble from the pile onto the floor aren’t anything that he could possibly ever hope to squeeze over his hands.

He knows who they belong to, even if his brain is refusing to catch up. He stares at the gloves on the floor. He finds himself wondering what Keith’s wearing as he trains.

Today is not his day, clearly. Maybe he should follow his own advice to Pidge and just go to bed.

Leaning forward, he fetches the gloves from the floor. For a moment, he isn’t sure what he should do—if he should bring Keith’s clothes back to him and explain the situation, or if he should simply stuff them back down into the chute and pretend that he never saw them at all.

The first plan is immediately discarded when he notices the bulge growing only firmer in the front of his pants. The elastic and silky-smooth fabric is doing nothing to hide it. He lets out a long breath, shuffling from foot to foot. A forlorn glance around the room, a myriad of thoughts running wild inside of his head. He’s supposed to be the leader of Voltron because he’s good at coming up with successful plans of action in a pinch, but right now, as he’s surely trapped inside of a malfunctioning alien bathroom, up to his ankles in freezing cold water, holding tightly onto the sweaty clothes of his inappropriate crush—

He’s absolutely stumped.

He sets Keith’s clothes down on the sink, grasping loosely to the edges and watching himself in the mirror. He tries to think of what sort of pep-talk he would give someone else in this position. He tells himself that surely, there’s a way to get out of this with his dignity intact.

 _‘Just walk it off, Shiro,’_ he tells himself, _‘ try not to think about the way that those pants hug his figure. Try not to think about which places those gloves have touched.’_

Try not to imagine Keith touching himself deep in the darkness and the quiet of the night—never taking off the gloves if he doesn’t have to, biting down hard against his bottom lip to quell the little noises before they escape him. Arching into his own clumsy hands, just begging for a far more experienced partner to push him over into the depths of true pleasure.

He lets out a quiet, breathy curse. This is the worst pep-talk ever.

He moves over to one of the furthest sinks, putting enough distance between himself and Keith’s sweaty clothes that he can barely smell them anymore. He doesn’t even want to think about what sort of pervert he must be for getting so hot and bothered over the smell of someone else’s musk. He doesn’t want to consider the fact that Keith probably hasn’t even washed his outfit for over a week.

With a groan, he turns on the water, splashing a little over his burning cheeks. His reflection in the mirror is red-faced and meek. It’s a version of himself that he’s never seen before—thrown off not by the memories of Galra torture always crawling at the corners of his memories, or the threat of dangers looming just around the corner, but the idea of what his oldest friend must think about when he masturbates—whose face he sees in his dreams, and if he’s dancing around artificial enemies in the training deck in his pjs, or even in nothing at all.

There’s a thought lurking in the back of his head that tells him that Keith could very reasonably be wearing his paladin armor, but even still, he must be doing so without his underwear.

Somehow, that’s even worse.

With a deep, tapered breath, he slinks back toward Keith’s pile of clothes at the other end of the counter, brows drawn low as his shaking hand reaches out to touch them. Under the skin of his human fingers, they feel just a little worn down, rougher than they must have been years ago when he first got them—and Shiro isn’t sure if they were even new back then.

For a moment, he marvels at the fact that he really doesn’t know that much about Keith at all. Sure, Keith has allowed him to pass through the bubble of distrust that he wraps around himself like a security blanket. He’s welcomed him into his life and his current predicaments with a quiet, bashful sort of hesitance, but he’s never divulged Shiro enough to paint a perfectly clear picture of where he comes from.

For that, Shiro’s always used his own imagination to fill in the gaps.

And right now, his imagination is going absolutely wild—but not for any reason that he might actually consider to be appropriate.

He’s imagining the way that these clothes might drag against Keith’s sweaty skin, how he might grasp the edge of his shirt in his hand and pull it up to wipe his face—tugging the fabric up just enough that any lucky passersby might catch a glimpse of that toned lower belly. He imagines the way that the gloves might feel—so warm and rough—when Keith touches something; how it might feel to be the hilt of his knife in the wake of battle, or the handle of his bayard as it materializes out of seemingly thin air. Shiro imagines how those dull-nailed fingers would feel dragging over the expanse of his back—and so guiltily that he almost leaves the clothes and speeds off to his room to sulk—he wonders if Keith would leave the gloves on during sex, or if he’d slip them off: a blushing bride on her wedding night, so open, so vulnerable and bare.

His prosthetic hand comes to cover his mouth. The metal feels ice cold against his flaming cheeks. This is so wrong on so many levels. He can only imagine the number of demerits that he might wrack up in the moral military—how much some far-off alien God might sputter and quake in the face of his mountainous sins.

He shakes his head quickly to clear his thoughts. He grasps the fabric tight in his fist. And he wonders—shamefully, privately—if Keith ever thinks these sorts of things about anyone else.

Or maybe… if Keith ever thinks these sorts of things about _him_.

He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from lifting one of the gloves from the pile even if he wanted to. It’s still a little damp, but it’s warm against his lips—smelling of leather and of sweat, the soil of foreign planets, the clean mint of the soap here. His mind plays a reel of images behind his eyes, of planting his lips against these gloves while they’re wrapped around Keith’s palms, of threading his fingers into the gaps between Keith's and holding him down.

His other hand finds the ache between his legs, drawing nervous lines over the fly of his pajama pants, wondering if the sparks still flying from the door signify that it’s safe enough to assume that no one else can get in here and see him.

Even if he doesn’t touch himself, he reasons, this still doesn’t look good. There’s nothing about standing in a dimly lit, slowly flooding bathroom with Keith’s glove against his face and an erection that’s borderline deadly tenting his pants that he could easily explain away.

He curses through his teeth, shivering at the way that his lips drag against the material of Keith’s gloves. He imagines the drag of that leather over places further down—from his chest to his abdomen, from his navel to…

He jerks a little as the chilly metal of his fingers tap the head of his penis—so hard and so eager that it’s breached the slit of his pants. As though his hand has a mind of its own—or as though it cannot comprehend the difference between what he wants to be doing and what he should be doing during a moment like this, it grips the shaft lightly, giving a few experimental pumps.

He doesn’t will it to stop, and he doesn’t drop Keith’s glove either. His gaze flicks momentarily to the door. He bites his lip, drawing in a deep breath.

This is wrong. This is so, so wrong.

But then he’s thinking of Keith spread out underneath him—red cheeked, open lips, begging for the kind of release that he’s only imagined in his most immoral of dreams. He’s thinking of those thin ankles overlapping behind his back, prompting him forward, inviting him inside.

He’s thinking about the way that Keith might rake his nails over his skin—if he’d nip playfully at his shoulders and neck, if he’d whisper sweet nothings into his ear or if he’d shudder under the weight of his own helpless, euphoric gasps and moans.

Surely, Keith would be too proud to call out to him. Surely, Keith would think that he was too big a man to show just how much he wanted anything, even whatever the Hell _this_ is.

He’d push back when Shiro leaned forward. He’d make sex more of a wrestling match than an emotional breakthrough between lovers.

And only after Shiro chipped away at his emotional armor would he expose that smooth, vulnerable underbelly. Only when he pressed forward hard enough would Keith allow him to fold away those defenses to see the real person inside.

Like a geode, maybe—hiding away the beauty of himself below layers and layers of thorny stone. And once he’s broken open and bared, despite the how breath-taking he may be, he's still spiny, still prickly to the touch. Within him, only more barriers and more tests; so wrapped up in his defenses that he might not even know himself completely anymore.

But still beautiful, Shiro thinks, and still deadly, and still everything that he’s ever wanted in another person all wrapped up in one stunning, uncrackable mess.

He’s gripping himself a little bit harder, trying not to think too much about the fact that most men wouldn’t get so poetic during a time like this. He’s having trouble concentrating on much of anything aside from the idea of finally cracking Keith’s code—of knowing him in ways that surely no one else ever has.

Of holding him and loving him, and sliding inside of him like a lover would—of kissing him gently and telling him that everything will be okay, because he loves him, and he’s _always_ loved him, and no amount of battles or torture or anything else could ever change that.

He might be a broken thing. He might be a muddy-memoried, glassy eyed fool, but the way that Keith smiles at him makes him feel as though his tattered edges may someday mend. The way that Keith sometimes reaches out and touches him lights a fire deep down inside of him that he’d worried might have gone out.

The way that Keith fights for him—how he’d defend him to the death—it makes him wonder if there might be something within him worth fighting for, if someone like Keith, with so much to offer the world, can find him worthy of that level of devotion.

It’s absolutely reasonable that he would fall in love with Keith.

But he’s never been able to find a reason why someone like Keith would fall in love with him.

He grunts a little, folding in on himself, slumping against the edge of the sink in an awkward stance as he refuses to move either of his hands to hold himself up. He won’t look himself in the mirror like this—he doesn’t even want to think about the shameful pervert that he would find there. He’d rather imagine Keith threading those small, calloused fingers through his hair, cupping his cheek, digging into his shoulders as he caves into the unavoidable waves of pleasure crashing down around him.

He imagines that Keith’s lips might be dry, but hotter than even the desert sun. He imagines that kissing him might be akin to watching a supernova blossom out in open, empty space. He thinks that Keith might buckle beneath him, might call out his name, might beg to be touched in places that Shiro’s fingers could only dream of ever reaching.

With the last weak pumps of an embarrassed, shamed leader, his orgasm takes hold of him and his seed spills over his mechanical fingers. He’s braced against the sink, breathless, already sweaty and gross again. He’s slipping a little in the water, gripping Keith’s glove so hard in his fist that he worries that he might tear it in half.

And gradually, he collects himself. He washes the mess from his hands in the sink. He folds Keith’s clothes back into a neat pile, tossing them down the laundry chute and praying that somehow, despite some absurd Galra intuition or general Keith-like slyness, he can never learn what happened to them here.

He tells himself that Allura won’t be too upset with him if he takes a nap, if he wraps himself up in his blanket in the dark and smothers these thoughts with sleep. She’ll say that he deserves it after working so hard, and she’ll never have to know what sorts of things have him so worked up this time around.

_‘It’s not the Galra this time. It’s not Zarkon and it’s not the weight of our mission finally feeling too heavy on my shoulders. No Allura, it’s something so much worse. It’s Keith, you see… He’s just too attractive, too perfect. You see Allura, he’s just bad for my health.’_

With a scoff, he forces his way through the door, ignoring the puddles of water that dribble out into the hall. For once, for the very first time in his life, he’s going to leave a pressing problem for somebody else.

He passes no one on his way to his room. The lights beside the training deck still indicate that it’s in use. He tucks himself into bed once he reaches his room, watching the shadows moving slowly across the ceiling, listening to the far-off echoes of voices from the common area—Lance and Hunk, still laughing at some sort of joke. Pidge stopping in once her nap is through to join them.

He wonders if anyone will remember to fetch Keith for dinner. He wonders if anyone will wonder where he’s went off to.

Finally, as he’s thinking about Keith wearing himself out training, sweating and cursing and swaying on unsteady feet, he falls asleep.

And his dreams are haunted by images of dark hair between his fingers, of dry, warm lips against his cheeks. Of a voice, forever agitated, forever filled with a general distaste of the world around him, telling him to wake up, to face reality and to face the truth—

To admit, at the very least to himself, that he’s fallen too hard for his oldest friend to keep hiding it.

After tossing and turning, cursing himself and his dream version of Keith—far too wise and far too stubborn for his own good—he throws off the blankets, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Maybe this is the universe's way of punishing him for ignoring the shower.

Maybe these thoughts will finally allow him to rest if he finds a way to stop the leak.

 

* * *

 

Keith stumbles into the bathroom after a long stretch of training, rubbing a hand over the purpling bruise on the back of his neck, and wondering dejectedly how he possibly let his guard down long enough to allow the gladiator to hit him in such a dangerous place.

His paladin armor feels clunky and hot around him, like a shell that he’s all-too eager to finally shed. The puddles leading toward the bathroom are less than promising. He hisses a curse as he reaches the door and it only sparks and sputters in greeting.

It takes him a full five minutes to pry his way through. The laundry chute is already making a series of troubling jamming sounds all the way across the room.

Even more water pours out into the hall as he steps inside, sloshing through noisily and wondering if he can get away with just picking up his clothes and leaving without actually having to fix the sputtering shower. Coran will throw a fit if he finds out, and surely Lance will have a few choice words about him being a lazy, conniving little sneak, but after getting his ass handed to him by the gladiator for nearly five straight hours, he doesn’t really feel like figuring out why the water won’t stop spilling out onto the floor.

What a mess, he thinks. Battling the Galra is one thing, but he didn’t sign up to be a glorified plumber.

His legs feel like jello by the time that he makes it to the chute. It gurgles a little as he spams the return button, gritting his teeth against the urge to brandish his bayard and _make_ it work.

Finally, it spits something out, and it only takes him a moment to realize that these clothes aren’t even his own. They’re too big, too clean—and the smell of metal, the sweetness of shampoo, the cleanness of Altean laundry detergent still not faded completely away is far too familiar to ignore.

For a moment, he simply stands there, breathing in the smell. Shiro washes his clothes too often, he thinks. Does he wash them every day? Does he realize that they’ll wear out easier, that the black will fade to gray that much sooner?

Does he realize that Keith only washes his once a month at best, and they’ll probably last him so much longer?

Despite himself, he can feel a familiar ache beginning to swell in his lower belly. He can feel the prickle of arousal rushing over his skin and pooling in the depths of his belly. He wades over to the sink, setting Shiro’s clothes on the edge of the counter, and staring at them—long and hard and torn.

This is stupid, he tells himself.

What kind of pervert gets worked up over someone else’s clothes?

He shakes his head, biting the inside of his lip, and avoiding his own eyes in the mirror.

The shower continues to dump water onto the floor. The lights flicker on and off overhead.

Eventually, after an internal battle, after the filthy thoughts dig their claws into his brain and his erection feels far too hard and far too trapped within his space suit, he undresses.

And guiltily, he gives in to temptation.

What Shiro doesn't know won't hurt him, he thinks. A small crush on his oldest friend can't ruin their relationship if he never finds out.

Gently, he grasps a handful of Shiro's shirt, lifting it to his face. The material is soft against his nose, and Shiro's smell is intoxicating—the mixture of subtle sweat and metal, a cleanliness that Keith doesn't understand, mingles together into a scent all its own. A scent that is entirely, overwhelmingly Shiro.

He drags in a sharp breath—naked, pale and scrawny, littered with ugly bruises and scrapes below the flickering lights overhead. The water is slowly spilling down the drains beneath his feet, but not quick enough to spare his ankles from its chill. He tries not to imagine the scene from that stupid boat movie—the one with the old woman and the necklace—and he tries to tell himself that holding Shiro close in a sinking ship would be far less romantic and far more terrifying than that movie was painting it to be.

He imagines that Shiro lifting him up and fucking him against the counter would be a better plot anyway. No one would even have to die. There would only be the two of them: ankle-deep in freezing water, their noises masked below the hum of the water, Shiro's mouth so hot and eager against his skin that he might never feel cold again for the rest of his life. He'd pay to see that, he thinks. He'd be more than willing to sit back and watch exactly what sorts of things Shiro's hands might be capable of if he'd let them feel him completely.

Another deep breath, he chastises himself for getting carried away. He's too tired to think straight. His thoughts are clouded with exhausted arousal. He's thinking about Shiro splayed out naked on a plush couch. He's imagining how Shiro might pin him down and fuck him in the back seat of an old-timey car. He lets out a flustered, frustrated groan, gripping at his erection just a little bit rougher and trying to shake the thoughts of idiotic Hollywood cliches.

But Shiro would be romantic like that, he tells himself. Shiro would hold him so softly, as though he was worried that he'd shatter in his hands. He'd kiss him so softly that Keith might wonder if he were even there at all. They'd be a warm tangle of limbs, and Shiro would feel like an apparition against his skin.

Surely, he would be sincere, and he would be thoughtful. He would whisper to Keith in the smallest voice that he could possibly hear.

And he would tell him, so softly, in that voice of his like soft caramel melting sweet on the tip of Keith's tongue—

"K-Keith?!"

He whips around, kicking up water as his frantic eyes settle on the door. His heart feels like a pinball jostling around in his rib cage, pounding so quickly that he worries that it might fly right out of his chest into the puddles on the floor. The voice that calls out to him is far too masculine to be Allura or Pidge, and far too deep to be Lance, Coran, or Hunk. The baritone of it rattles out in the air between them, as though it's jumped right out of Keith's fantasies to punish him for his sins in real life. Shiro is standing in the doorway, one hand propping open the door. The shadows of the broken lights seep into the curves of his face, outlining the shock of wide eyes, the tenseness of his jaw, the chiseled line of his muscles poised in stress.

Keith doesn't know what he wants to find there, in Shiro's face. He doesn't know what to expect from this situation at all. He tosses down Shiro's shirt as though it's white hot, feeling suddenly thousands of times filthier than he has ever before in his life. He doesn't think to cover himself, maybe because it seems as though Shiro is doing everything in his power not to look anywhere but at his face. Neither of them budge for a long moment. Keith wishes that the ship would crash. He wishes that they could clip the only known iceberg in space, and that maybe he could sink away into the stars like that idiot who didn't think that two people could fit in a door—maybe it would be better for everyone if he did just that.

Maybe then he wouldn't have to explain to Shiro what exactly he just walked in on.

"I-I, uh," he looks around, sloshing his feet in the water, so hot that he can barely feel the coldness of it anymore. He can see it sliding out into the hall between Shiro's legs. Anxiety crawls within him, and he worries that it might attract the rest of the crew. Would Shiro tell them what's going on? Would he allow them to peer into the room and witness just what a slimy little pervert the pilot of the Red Lion really is?

He swallows hard.

"I... I got your clothes."

He motions weakly at the pants still folded on the edge of the counter, and the shirt soaking on the floor.

Shiro clears his throat. The sound of it sends a spike of fear skittering right down to Keith's bones.

"Yeah..." Shiro's voice trails off. He brings his free hand behind his head, scratching nervously. "I found yours earlier. I, uh..."

He's eyeing the puddles, shoulders slumping as the door fizzles in his grip. He's taking in the way that his shirt floats about, as though it's the most interesting part of this entire predicament that he's stumbled into. Keith doesn't know what he would do if he were in Shiro's shoes. He doesn't know if he'd even stick around for this long.

"Look," Shiro says quickly, straightening out. He's stepping back a little, allowing the door to slide shut. His cheeks are redder than Keith thought skin could possibly get. He's shuffling about awkwardly, tugging a little at his pajama pants, seeming as though whichever words he's trying to force out just don't want to work the way that he wants them to. "I-I might have, um. I might have... done that too, so..."

He waves his hands wide in the air in front of him. Keith cocks his head to the side. The humiliation of being caught in the act is slowly fading away, replaced only with confusion, a sick sort of amusement, and the arousal that still hasn't staved off completely.

"Just get dressed and meet me in my room, okay? I—I'll... I'll help you out."

Keith isn't sure if he's ever seen Shiro move even that quick when he's fighting Galra. He isn't sure if he's seen anyone short of cartoon characters scurry off so fast in his life. He sends Shiro's pants a baffled frown, lifting them from the sink and inspecting them as though they might hold the answers to all of this. He isn't sure if he's in the right frame of mind to be contemplating anything, but it sounded as though... Shiro just admitted that he touched himself when he found his clothes too. He feels no camaraderie in this revelation. It doesn't chase away the perverted sense of guilt completely. His erection has softened in shame. He feels small and strung out, shameful and tired.

And slowly, as he thinks about what Shiro said to him, he feels a glimmer of hope.

He doesn't know what he's supposed to expect once he reaches Shiro's room, but he puts on his armor nonetheless. He isn't sure what's going to happen with the flooding in the bathroom, but for now, that's anyone else's problem but his.

He isn't sure why he feels so elated as he shoves his way through the door and takes the first few steps down the hall, but no matter how much he doesn't understand it, it doesn't stop.

In the back of his thoughts, with a tiny, toothy grin tugging up the corners of his lips, he wonders if putting on that sort of show was all that it really took to woo someone like Shiro. No fantastic romantic display, no bouquet of flowers, no poetry far too flowery to be written in his own sloppy hand. He wonders if the only push that either of them needed was something as stupid as a malfunctioning laundry chute.

He wonders, moving just a little quicker, far too eager, far too excited for his own good, what sorts of things Shiro imagined when he found his clothes hours ago.

And he wonders if maybe Shiro will show him just what he was thinking about when he finally reaches his room.

**Author's Note:**

> You wouldn't believe what kinds of tags are available, as we speak, to use for different stories! I had to cut myself off, but there were some great ones. For whatever reason, they didn't have "flooding alien castles make everyone weirdly horny for some reason", but I guess I can forgive them for that little indiscretion. 
> 
> Anyway, the Sheith fandom has been incredibly kind to me since I officially joined like... a few weeks ago, and the lovely Sochan was one of the first people to make me feel so welcome. I really have nothing to offer in return but really weird smut, so... I hope you enjoyed it anyway! 
> 
> Also, a special shout-out to user lemoninagin for taking a look at my original 4k word draft and saying, "It's kind of sad, Moth..." so I could add those last 2k words to make it... less like that.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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